With over a half a million people entering Rocky Mountain National Park in September alone, the park is approaching the three million-visitor mark with three months left to count.

Last year, the park had its third best ever number of visitors when 3,345,614 were counted. With three months to accumulate data, this number could be surpassed.

According to figures released Wednesday by the park, 2,8497,212 visitors had been counted through the end of September. In September, park recreation visits hit 527,172, an increase of nine percent from last year when 483,780 people entered the park.

"We're near the three million visitors mark just through September," noted park public information officer Kyle Patterson.

For the year, park visits were running 2.47 percent ahead of last year through the first nine months. September 2012 recreations visits were up nine percent from 2011; 18.9 percent from 2010; 24.15 percent from 2009; 19.18 percent from 2008 and 27.73 percent from 2007.